How did we get fat?

Mar 20, 2018 Posted in Articles, blog 7 Comments

I don’t know how you got fat, but here’s how I did.

Dear gentle reader: This piece is retrospective—written through the eyes/feelings/thoughts I had years before knowing about the ketogenic lifestyle, and if you’re well-researched in this information, you may have little patience while reading it, or even find yourself wondering, “WTH? Who didn’t know that?” Please consider what we all know now to be true is that carb addiction is bad for the brain, and keto hindsight is well… extremely crystal clear. I appreciate your understanding. Thanks.

Like most Americans between the ’70s and ’00s, I was led to believe the low-fat/fat-free way of eating foods meant a healthier life.

And we bought it all, hook, line, and sinker.

My dad had a heart attack in the early ’90s, so everyone in our household became “re-educated” by the cardiologist).

We were told vegetable or soybean oils were much healthier for us than any other. That butter is bad, and to eat margarine instead. That eggs are high in cholesterol and should be avoided, and if you must eat eggs, to consume the white only, or use egg replacement (remember liquid artificial eggs?)

Let’s not also forget the whole fat-free craze, such as fat-free yogurt, salad dressing, and companies putting “fat free” on labels for everything, even stuff like candy (well duh, who’d have ever thought candy had fat in it?).

Even before I was very overweight, I thought I ate relatively healthy.

And by the majority practical standards, it was. I would eat what seemed like normal meals.

Breakfast would consist of fruit, yogurt, oatmeal (or cereal without sugar), or whole wheat toast, juice, etc.

Lunches were salads with fat-free dressings and some turkey and low fat cheese, or sandwiches on whole wheat bread with lean meats, lettuce, tomatoes, and mustard instead of mayo.

Dinner was usually made at home, stuff like veggie stir fry (with low fat/low-salt sauces) on top of brown rice, or plate of pasta with sauce and garlic bread maybe one night a week.

Weekend get-togethers with friends would occasionally mean pizza or burgers, and beers, maybe some ice cream or popcorn at a party or out at the movies, sometimes Chinese takeout… but most of the time, “normal” foods that weren’t considered dangerous.

Oh, and fruit. Man, I loved fruit. Oranges, apples, plums, peaches, grapefruit, pears, pineapples, grapes, all that stuff. We were told to eat 5-6 servings per day growing up!

Snacks consisted of whole wheat crackers or things like grapes and fat free cookies or “baked” chips.

Starting in my early teen years I was sort of chubby (I was a normally skinny kid until about 7th grade). It just seemed like no matter what I did, how many sports I played in school or how much exercise I did, I had a gut, chubby face and hands, but my legs and arms were/are normal-sized.

Heck, I even got a gym membership when I moved into my first apartment in my early twenties, where I went each day after work, to do cardio, abs, and sometimes swimming. I’d lose two pounds, but then be catching up again. I was still very overweight (fluctuating between 170-189, but everyone said I “carried it well.”)

It wasn’t until my early-20s that I was pushing 200 lbs. I still thought of myself as an energetic and relatively healthy individual, and didn’t get tired often or consider myself lazy ever. I never really was much of a dieter.

I ate what was told to me was “healthy” (sadly, this misinformation by educators, marketers, and the media were lousy with and still are), and had the occasional splurge we all thought of as normal. But I still gained weight (or at least, didn’t lose any when I tried).

It was frustrating when, even if I didn’t overeat or ate the same as everyone else I was around, it made no difference in terms of how I felt.

I was the fat friend, the fat sibling, the fat girl everywhere.

Even at the office, while everyone else would be munching popcorn at their desk, they could do so without getting looks, like I did.

There were days I found myself dozing off while upright at my desk at work. I would just suddenly open my eyes and not remember how ten minutes had passed while I sat there, totally out of it. I would try to go to sleep earlier to make up for it. Overall though, I didn’t feel tired (in retrospect, I WAS tired, I just didn’t think so).

I even got special wedge pillows to use in my bed to keep myself partially upright so I wouldn’t snore or stop breathing (I didn’t know there was such a thing as sleep apnea back then, I’m sure I had it), just seemed like since my mom, dad, uncle, grandpa all did as adults, I thought it was a hereditary thing.

I happened upon the Atkins diet around 2004 …when a friend and I were researching ways to eat (even) better, and since Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (a book from the 1970s) was enjoying a revival at the time, we both picked up copies and read it.

I tried the recipes in earnest because it seemed simple enough to just focus on fat, small amounts of non-starchy veg like spinach, and moderate protein intake. The book included lots of omelets and creamed spinach or recipes with everything slathered in butter and cream, lol. But I wasn’t really into those things…or at least, didn’t cook them very well to taste good.

I basically just started eating more eggs & bacon, cut out all breads, pastas, rice, and potatoes, and just tried eating all manner of cauliflower. While I really liked eating this way for awhile, I was miserable with headaches in the induction phase, and seemingly always hungry after that. In hindsight (again!), there was no real focus on electrolyte balance, nor any emphasis on how much/what kind of sodium intake should be followed. This is why many on Atkins suffered with aches and general malaise while enduring the induction phase of the lifestyle (carb withdrawal).

As a person who has always loved vegetables, I still couldn’t get enough of them, and I’m sure it was just a matter of replacement addiction…being addicted to starch and sweet fruits and replacing it with semi-high-carb vegetables, so I wasn’t doing myself any favors and I’m sure I sabotaged continuing my success on Atkins diet by overeating tomatoes, parsnips, onions, and other things that were supposed to be extremely limited (this is by no means, to say I was gaining weight on vegetables, but that I was still hungry because I wasn’t focusing on protein and fat).

“Limited” is a word I would use to describe how I felt about what I could eat back then.

I did lose 30 pounds in 5 months, but it seemed like I couldn’t sustain this way of eating anymore, especially while around my family, friends, and coworkers, who thought it was weird that anyone would decline birthday cake or donuts brought into the break room.

While most of my coworkers ate Lean Cuisine at their desks or went out to Culver’s or Applebee’s, I’d eat leftover salmon & broccoli or dip cherry tomatoes in ranch and eat pepperoni sticks at my desk.

I would use one of my lunch breaks per week to take advantage of the fact there was a slightly upscale grocery store a short walk away from the suburban office I was working in at the time, and I would stock the fridge and freezer at work with pre-made salads, string cheese, frozen spinach, and other stuff I could microwave easily, to save me having to carry it on the bus home.

I went even further overboard that way, and I also think because of that, I spent way more money on groceries because I was still always hungry and constantly craving variety (I also didn’t think I was shopping correctly back then, by the way). I was fooling myself into thinking I could just keep trying new things but lots of them were not allowed. I wanted to give up being tired and hungry all the time on Atkins (doing it WRONG, of course—reading this back to myself in my head I’m like, “WHERE’S THE PROTEIN?!”), and resumed my normal way of eating “healthy.”

Then all the weight began to creep back on because of my lack of focus.

I clearly did not learn the lessons Dr. Atkins tried earnestly to teach me.

By age 30, I was almost 275.

I spent the time in these couple of years personally dealing with a lot. I have often referred to this point in my life as my first early mid-life crisis (ha, I think I’m on my third). I was struggling to get my first business off the ground, one which I established on the side of a full time job a couple years before, and then I broke off a two and a half-year engagement.

On top of all that, the most significant stresser was that my dad’s illness took a turn for the worst, so my whole family was affected by the fact that he was no longer living at home with Mom, but in a nursing home. Life for all of us was upside-down.

Even though trying Atkins was the first really significant change I made to my eating, I began to reluctantly accept that I was probably always going to be fat, because again…at the time, I saw my lifestyle as normal — and it was confirmed time and time again because what I ate/how much, and the kind of exercise I did—was the same as what my peers were doing, and they were unaffected.

I subconsciously quit spinning my wheels with food, while consciously putting my focus and efforts into my career, my interests, and my family, and stopped worrying about my weight, since I felt nothing was going to change it. I mean, by the time I was 31, my body already started resembling the same shape as my mother’s, my aunt’s, and my grandma’s (all of them obese).

Seemed like it was going to just have to be this way. I trudged on with life as it was.

There were times I was struggling to buy food, much less, pay bills. I opted for the cheapest but again, most “healthy” foods I could get by with…most of the time.

Running my business from home full-time with only a small clientele load plus volunteering on a couple of boards of directors meant time and money were both precious and few.

I’d cook simple, cheap, and quick meals … rice and beans, whole grain pasta, lots of salads, homemade soup made with fat-free broth and full of tons of low fat ingredients I thought were nutritious and filling, like barley, lentils, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes. I ate fruit in season, and I only always bought whole wheat bread. In fact, I only ate whole grains, and everything was low fat. I’d buy oats in bulk and often ate them or whole-grain toast for breakfast. And couscous. What the HELL is couscous, even? Lumps of starch. But we didn’t know that, back then. We were told it was an ancient heart-healthy grain, lol.

When I could afford it (on occasion), I would buy boneless/skinless chicken breast, turkey bacon, and very lean turkey sausage. I almost never ate beef, and rarely ate eggs, mostly when dining out for brunch with family & friends and I’d get an omelet.

I always used “heart healthy” unsaturated fats, like canola oil, and Earth Balance was the only margarine I thought tasted closest to butter but was “good for me.” It was the only thing I’d splurge on. Everything else was as cheaply sourced as possible. I clearly did not read the Atkins book all the way through.

At the time, the neighborhood in which I lived was a nightmare as far as getting decent groceries, so I’d go to other parts of town and hit the farmers markets and the discount food stores. When I was feeling lazy, I’d buy envelopes and cups of instant soup at the convenience store across the street. If I could afford it, I’d get the green label brand of soup with “healthy” in the name.

I thought I was eating very healthily and well, considering my meager income.

I quit drinking sugary sodas with my ex a few years before, and only occasionally drank diet pop. I made coffee on the weekends as a treat, and used tons of powdered non-dairy coffee creamer because it was fat-free and sugar-free (little did I know at the time, with the amounts I was using, it was chock-full of trans fat).

I would eat by the clock. Once I was up for the day, I was ravenous. And I’d eat lunch at noon, and dinner at five. I would also snack on things like carrot sticks, whole wheat crackers, or yogurt.

Letting stress pile on was easy, because of my personality, I’ve always been self-conscious and aware of how others perceived me. It was very hard to be a fat person, yet be basically living, eating, and being active on the same level as everyone else, but getting looks and judgements–the kind that implied I was a lazy slob who ate donuts all day (ick, I’m SO not a sweet tooth). In retrospect, the stress would go straight to my gut.

When I was stressed, I’d feel more hungry and often didn’t easily detect when I was full, but I didn’t want to give into overeating because I was almost literally scraping by and felt lucky to eat at all. I could usually buy more food the next week, because it was all cheap, but I still rationed everything.

Of course, looking back, this was a most non-ideal way for me to eat. The abundance of grains and trans fat, and the lack of protein, plus timing of meals was all a bad combination that, over time, would lead to my unexpected and very disastrous metabolic downfall…if only I’d known…but this was NORMAL and a very HEALTHY way to eat, according to pretty much anyone, especially health and nutrition “experts”!

In the summer of 2007, I weighed about 285. I was working 12-14 hour days and constantly stressing out about work. One day, an old injury scar opened up on my leg due to excess water retention pushing through.

The water issue was something I dealt with since my late 20s. My mom and grandma both suffered from it all the time, and my Mom always told me it was just something they passed on to me (I know NOW that this is false, and can be controlled with diet–carbs in the body hold on to water when our body should actually shed it).

Anyway, my leg got infected because I was afraid to do something about it, having no insurance as a self-employed person (yes, I know now how stupid THAT line of thinking was). During the outpatient treatment process to heal it (which was for some reason, taking forever), the wound nurse told me she thought I might have high blood sugar, and no matter what she did to treat it, it might never heal at this rate. I visited a GP and that visit confirmed what I suspected.

Then, I was diagnosed with diabetes melitus (or “Type 2.”)

Not only that, I was severely diabetic. My HbA1C was at 11%, and my first blood sugar reading was over 320 mg/dL. I was 34.

I knew diabetes was bad business, my dad had it (of course, not until he was in his ’50s, which is when most adults would, if they had it–according to wisdom at the time) but I didn’t think it couldn’t be managed. I knew one other person who was type 2 besides Dad, and she was doing OK (so I thought).

[insert history of lots of oral meds, blood testing tutorials, nutrition classes way out of town, rapid weight loss/gain roller-coaster rides that never seemed to end, weird menstrual cycles, graduating to insulin injections–then doubling the units and even adding in a brand of insulin on top of what I was already taking, and nothing changing… EVEN THOUGH I was exercising, eating correctly according to the ADA¹ and this went on for years]

I did a lot of research on dietary diabetes treatment for over the span of about a year. I saw a talk by Sally Fallon on The Oiling Of America [1]. I read a couple of books, one by Gary Taubes, “Why We Get Fat” [2]. I saw Time magazine back-pedal on how America got the whole lipid hypothesis wrong, and that butter wasn’t so bad after all. I saw the movie, “Fat Head” by Tom Naughton. [3] My eyes were re-opened to much of what I learned to do incorrectly from reading Atkins (which admittedly, I skipped a lot of, and just dove into the recipes and food advice). I was keen to learn more. I found “The Obesity Code” by Dr. Jason Fung [4] online and got a Kindle copy.

Armed with my research, I started following the ketogenic diet in mid-2016.

I was hopeful and excited when I found some info online about the ketogenic diet.

I was ready to quit the meds and the insanity cycle of eating “clean” yet still getting sick and fat with diabetes. I was sick of pumping myself full of insulin because the doctor said to, because it was the only thing keeping my blood glucose lowered (it was still high).

So… if there’s a moral here, it should be that I should have not just waited to treat a problem, but ate better this whole time, right? Right.

But recall that although I did eat a variety of things and practiced moderation my whole life, I was still getting sick and staying fat.

Once I discovered keto and put the methods I learned into practice, I fixed my diabetes and put it into reverse!

Keto basically turns your body from a glucose-burning machine into a fat-burning one. I began focusing on eating protein, and not limiting fats (instead of avoiding them, as most of us had been taught). I learned humans can live (and even thrive) in ketosis by ignoring those old government-suggested dietary standards and And when we refer to “fat” in terms of keto, we mean pure and unrefined fat from natural sources…not weird, man-made soybean/vegetable & canola oils that are toxic and inflammatory…and that I ate a LOT of over my lifetime.

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